THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF THE EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION AREA AND ROMANIA'S PROGRESS TOWARDS BOLOGNA OBJECTIVES

Quality assurance in higher education is at the heart of efforts to build a coherent, compatible and attractive European Higher Education Area (EHEA), in line with the objectives of the pan-European Bologna Process. Over the past decade, there has been growing interest, in Europe and worldwide, in quality assurance in higher education. With globalization, economic integration and increased academic and professional mobility, there is a growing need for the recognition of qualifications outside the country which awards them. The "borderless" delivery of higher education has made cross-border quality assurance increasingly important. The emergence of so-called "degree mills" (fake universities selling fake "degrees" on the internet) makes it vital to distinguish legitimate education undertaken abroad from spurious qualifications. Quality assurance helps to make higher education transparent and trustworthy for European citizens and employers as well as for students and scholars from other continents. The paper aims to present the attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area and the steps made forward by Romania in achieving the objectives established by the Bologna process.